The work proposed for the current year has several goals. First, there will be an effort to devise procedures utilizing ion exchange chromatography and HPLC for the isolation of anglerfish proglucagon and its cleavage intermediates. If isolation is achieved, chemical characterization of these peptides will be performed. Second, isolation of anglerfish glucagon has been accomplished and sequence analysis will be attempted. Third, we will perform several collaborative studies in which we will compare the molecular sizes, immunogenicity and chemical characteristics of cell-free translation products of islet mRNA with labeled peptides obtained from short-term incubation of intact islet tissue. Fourth, we intend to continue our studies investigating the nature of the proteolytic processing of both cell-free translation products and "precursor" peptides from intact islet tissue.